Ratcliffe Power Station

Ratcliffe Power Station is located in Ratcliife on Soar, Nottingham and is owned by E.ON UK.

It comprises four units and has an installed capacity of 2,000 megawatts. This power station is fitted with a Flue Gas Desulphurisation unit to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions.

Protest against Ratcliffe plant
On August 31, 2009, Climate Camp activists announced a planned action against E.ON's Ratcliffe coal-fired power plant. The protesters hope to shut down the plant in a mass protest scheduled for October 17 and 18, 2009. Activist Charlotte Johnson said, "We will shut Ratcliffe by land, water and air. People will break into the plant and occupy the chimney. Coal power stations must be shut permanently if we are to have any chance of stopping catastrophic climate change." A spokesman for E.ON said the company will work with police to ensure the plant remains in operation. Ratliffe ranks 18th on a list of the most polluting power plants in Europe in 2008.

During the action, hundreds of protesters tried to break through a security fence surrounding the plant. Police arrested more than 50 activists.

Allegations of police suppression of evidence against protestors
On May 24, 2011, The Guardian reported that the twenty environmental activists convicted of "conspiring to shut down" Ratcliffe are to launch an appeal after allegations that police suppressed potentially crucial evidence from an undercover officer. The 20 were found guilty of plotting to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station following a three-week criminal trial and police operation costing £700,000. But their convictions were thrown into doubt after revelations that they had been infiltrated by Mark Kennedy, a police spy who was alleged to have played a central role in the organising the plot. Revelations about Kennedy in the Guardian earlier in 2011 led to four inquiries amid admissions from police chiefs and ministers that the infiltration of protest groups has gone "badly wrong". In response, an independent review looked into the convictions, and the conclusion prompted Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, to telephone the activists' barrister offering to provide assistance in overturning the convictions.

Mike Schwarz, the group's lawyer said: "We shall follow the DPP's response to the appeal with interest. We take the view that it is now incumbent on the crown - having assiduously and in such underhand and unaccountable ways gained so much personal information about the protest movement - to make amends. The crown should account fully and publicly to the court of appeal." In one inquiry, the Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the allegation that the police deliberately withheld evidence from court.

In a joint statement, the activists said: "Our case continues to demonstrate the state's consistency in putting the interests of unlimited growth and unfettered capitalism before the rights and needs of people and planet. Our story began with the largest pre-emptive arrest of activists the UK has ever seen back in April 2009, and has since seen a random selection of us dragged through costly legal processes. The resulting consequence was 20 of us being convicted and sentenced for a crime we did not commit."

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Advanced Power Technology Forum
 * British Coal Utilisation Research Association
 * Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
 * UK Coal
 * Coal Authority (UK)
 * Department of Trade and Industry (UK)
 * Scottish Coal
 * British Geological Survey
 * European Union Large Combustion Plant Directive
 * United Kingdom and coal
 * Very low sulphur coal

External Articles

 * E.ON UK, "Ratcliffe-on-Soar", E.ON UK website, accessed June 2008.